Image text: @agnieszkasshoes: "Part of what makes small talk so utterly debilitating for many of us who are neurodivergent is that having to smile and lie in answer to questions like, "how are you?" is exhausting to do even once, and society makes us do it countless times a day."
@LuckyHarmsGG: "It's not just the lie, it's the energy it takes to suppress the impulse to answer honestly, analyze whether the other person wants the truth, realize they almost certainly don't, and then have to make the DECISION to lie, every single time. Over and over. Decision fatigue is real"
@agnieszkasshoes: "Yes! The constant calculations are utterly exhausting - and all under the pressure of knowing that if you get it "wrong" you will be judged for it!"
My addition: For me, in addition to this, more specifically it's the energy to pull up that info and analyze how I am. Like I don't know the answer to that question and that's why it's so annoying. Now I need to analyze my day, decide what parts mean what to me and weigh the average basically, and then decide if that's appropriate to share/if the person really wants to hear the truth of that, then pull up my files of pre-prepared phrases for the question that fits most closely with the truth since not answering truthfully is close to impossible for me.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvPSP-2xU4h/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
It doesn't, and it doesn't intend to. Small talk is meant to give small doses of information about the other person, which may or may not be used in subsequent interactions. For instance, a brief exchange of comments about the state of the climate is not so much about whether it's raining or not but to gauge the tone of the other person and their facial expressions, from which other information is inferred, correctly or incorrectly.
Which brings us to the next point: small talk sucks for autistic people not only because its utility is concealed to us, but because most allistics are going to misinterpret our nonverbal cues by comparing them to the cues of other allistic people.
Thanks! Your explanation helped a lot!